Don't you dare call me a racist. I judge a man based on what he does with what he is given. Because of his place of authority, Jesse
Jackson has a great deal of power. If he abuses that power in the name of helping blacks when he really just helps himself and his friends, then I will take him to task on it.

OK, Greg. Now you understand what Susan and I are saying when we
demand respect for the other. Although Jason didn't say "You are a
racist" the way he said "you racists" was effectively the use of a
pejorative label. It doesn't feel good, does it? It certainly doesn't
encourage illocutionary discourse. So now you understand my reason for
putting my foot down about the use of affect-laden pejorative language.

As I said in my lecture yesterday, we sometimes don't know what is
going to appear as an affect-laden pejorative to another. So we have
to be sensitive enough to pick that up through good faith listening.

Greg, I picked up somewhere in this thread that you cited Wikipedia.
Good. That's giving us material that we can move to ta technical level
and take some of the affect-laden labelling out of the discourse.

I don't know Bill O'Riley (sp?) and I don't know any of the details of
the alleged corruption, etc, being cited. But may I quote myself from
this very thread?

Jeanne Curran wrote:

Randy, I didn't know about that. [don't recall what "that" was. Use the Up thread to find the thread messages] These issues are so complex that we may never be able to discern THE TRUTH. But the existence of this information out on the Internet gives us some sense of what people are thinking and why they are concerned.

May we preserve awareness, each of us, of the complexities of preserving peace,

love and peace, jeanne

Jason, apologize. Racist is too broad a label for you to be able to
call someone a racist when you barely know of his existence. How do
any of us know Greg? How do we know what made him say whatever led you
to think of him as racist? That is what illocutionary discourse is
for, to stop us from jumping to such unjustifiable conclusions without
examining the evidence for them in the light of our academic training.
Besides, it's pejorative and you know that.

I'm much more interested in how Greg has balanced Jesse Jackson's
accomplishments against his errors that resulted what we are calling
"corruption." Greg, since you are appalled by Jackson's mis-steps, how
do you feel about the mis-steps of the right? How are you actually
weighing the achievements against the mis-steps? Pretty hard to do,
isn't it? Admitting that, and sharing the measures you are using is
called transparency and humility. Good values, both.

"Jesse Jackson is a fraud. He fostered a child out of wedlock, and paid
for her house, move, and support out of his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
funds. He shakes down companies for payments to "minority suppliers"
who are his friends and family. When he organized a boycott of
Budweiser, he ended it after a dealership worth over $25 million was
sold to his sons for an undisclosed amount. There was also a report
that he demanded money form all the black-owned businesses in the area
to support the boycott. (sources: Wikipedia, The No Spin Zone by Bill
O'Reilly)"

"Jesse Jackson has been a crusader for human rights around the globe for all of his adult life. Yes, he has made mistakes, but his works shone brightly throughout his career. Louis Farrakahn is a complete shame -- his bigotry disguised as religion has stained any good works. How many times will Black Americans excuse his racism and torch other Blacks who simply don't agree with them?
Bottom line is, Farrahkan is a bully of the worst kind --either you're with him, or you're an Uncle Tom. I'm proud to say he does not represent me or my ideals, Jesse Jackson already has that covered."

Please notice that Jason is calling Farrakahn a racist, too, Greg. You and Jason need to agree on some kind of measure of what racism is if you're going to use the term in illocutionary discourse. No, Jason, you don't have to apologize to Farrakahn - but you should give us details or sources to explain your conclusion, so we are free to decide if we agree with your conclusions.

Discussion Questions

What' the unstated theoretical assumption behind our not wanting you to use pejorative labels in illocutionary discourse?

Look at the affect level rising in the dialog above.

What's one plausible theoretical source for understanding this affect label?

Let's take a look at Greg and Jason both saying "I won't apologize." How could we explain that?

Let me try. I suspect that both of them feel as though apologizing means that they're sorry for what they said, and neither one is. Jason still thinks Greg is exhibiting racist behavior, and Greg still thinks Jesse Jackson is a fraud. So they can't, in honesty, apologize. But I'm not really asking them to apologize because they think they were wrong. I'm asking them to apologize for having used affect-laden terms that made them each see red. They are welcome to maintain their respective positions. But I don't want them to resort to labelling and label calling instead of presenting evidence for each of their positions so that we can use their sources to help us make up our own minds on the issue.

They're not likely to change each others' minds, but each of them might convince some of us, and I would hope that would be by giving sources, and discussing what those sources mean to each of us.